Within a cellular environment, elements such as mobile phones and base stations communicate with each other to transmit and receive voice and/or data. Base stations can provide communication with other networks (e.g., Internet, carrier network) and/or other mobile phones. For example, a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless network can provide mobile phone service for a neighborhood. Communication within a cellular environment requires radio propagation to and from mobile phones and base stations. In many instances, base stations (e.g., macro-cells) can become overburdened as mobile phone density grows within an area. That is, the base station can become unable to service mobile phone requests. To alleviate the overload, low-power nodes (e.g. micro-cells, pico-cells, femto-cells, relays, etc.) can often be deployed to reside within the coverage area of the base station. For example, a pico-cell serving the interior of a building can provide additional capacity to a base station coverage area.
In heterogeneous network, a mixture of macro (e.g., standard base station of a mobile telephony network) and low-power nodes (e.g. micro-cells, pico-cells, femto-cells, relays, etc.) can be deployed. Frequently, a mobile phone can select a macro-cell based on signal strength of the macro-cell due to the cell's high transmit power and/or antenna gain. For example, macro-cell often operates at a 25-30 dB gain in downlink signal strength compared to a low-power node. Consequently, a macro-cell can be selected over low-power node, although the path loss (e.g., signal attenuation) from the low-power node can be lower resulting in a stronger signal (e.g., better connection).
When connected to a macro-cell, a mobile phone can set the uplink transmit power according to the path loss to the macro-cell. As a result, mobile phones proximate to a low-power node can transmit at high power due to the high path loss. This can create significant interference to the low-power node which can lower low-power node throughput significantly. Interference affecting a low-power node can result in reduced signal and/or service capability of the low-power node. Low-power node interference can result in imbalanced network load and inefficient use of network resources (e.g., continuously unused low-power nodes).